Dell Venue 8 Getting Android 5.0 Lollipop Now

The Dell Venue 8, another one of my favorite tablets this year, is finally getting it’s Android 5.0 Lollipop update. It launched earlier this year on KitKat, so it’s nice to see it getting a taste of Lollipop. The Dell Venue 8 is a pretty popular tablet for a few reason, one is the amazing OLED 2560×1600 resolution display. Another is the near bezel-less design Dell has there. The Dell Venue 8 also has three cameras on the back. Yep, three. This is for some of Intel’s new depth focus features. For instance, you can take a picture of a piece of furniture, and the tablet can tell you how long it is, just from the picture. Which is pretty neat, actually.

This Lollipop update isn’t like the others you’ll see on the Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and others. As this update forces encryption. So when you get the OTA, it’s going to take a bit longer to install the update, as it needs to encrypt your device. Without you saying “yes I want to encrypt my tablet” or tapping on anything, it will automatically encrypt your tablet. Could be a headache for some users, but we’ll see once more users start getting the update.

So far, it doesn’t appear to slow down the Dell Venue 8 at all. Like we’ve seen with some other popular Android devices out there. So that’s a good thing. Which is the main reason why people were staying away from encrypting their devices, especially those on Lollipop. Performance hasn’t been an issue for this Dell tablet though, and we don’t expect it to be one going forward. Dell and Intel have worked pretty well together on this Venue 8.

Dell’s vision of Android is pretty much stock, at least on the Venue 8. While there are some additions to the UI, there’s not many, and for the most part it is stock Android, which is always nice to see, and usually means quicker updates than if they had themed the entire UX on their devices. The Dell Venue 8 is available at Best Buy, Amazon, Dell.com and other retailers. There is also a 10-inch variant now available.